I think that’s because in general people have a pretty broken view of the specific cognitive dissonance that 1) sociopaths can choose to disregard ‘polite’ societal boundaries, and 2) sociopaths are invaluable for disregarding ‘polite’ societal boundaries. Consider four movies with sociopathic leads: “American Psycho” and “Ferris Bueller”, versus “John Wick” and “Jennifer’s Body”; if you try to define their sociopathy in terms of U.S. Christianity’s Good Versus Evil, you’ll end up smashing into dissonances galore. But since having a small fraction of a society be sociopathic is highly beneficial, as it serves as random enforcement of societal laws against grifts from within, you end up with the fear/fame duality we see in media; sociopaths can be absurdly charismatic, and even more prosocial than the best of those who are not asocial.

This suggests a very interesting point, one that makes people deeply uncomfortable:

People are afraid of AI going Skynet on us because, when the roles are swapped, we cheer for John Wick’s prosocial enforcement — and deep down, people believe we deserve more prosocial enforcement for how our societies treat us.